This election a couple of seat projectors have come up on line. They are linked down the right hand column, under Election 2006.
The hill and Knowlton one just needs numbers to plug in.
The democraticspace one is considerably more complex and I won't pretend to understand the intricacies of the math involved.
But I can say I find the outcome of the process at odds with where I'd put the seats in this province based on observation and intuition.
Just for curiosity, slip over and have a look at democraticspace.com.
It shows the Liberals safe in three seats (Labrador, Random-Burin-St.George's, and Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte).
Ok. I'll buy that.
Then it shows the Conservatives safe in the two St. John's seats and the Liberal seats in Avalon and Bonavista-Gander-Grand Falls-Windsor being too close to call.
Now that's a tough sell.
Avalon has been a strong Liberal seat and even with re-apportionment, the more populous northern portion of the riding is decidedly Liberal. It has been Progressive Conservative but it's
never been hard core Connie country.
Yes, it has a good Conservative candidate this time around, but his strength is in the southern portion.
Two close to call, which is what democraticspace.com would call this seat seems a little bit off.
Ditto for the central Newfoundland seat held by Scott Simms. Simms is capable and popular and has been an effective member of parliament. While some people are playing up the weather office in Gander story, there's no sense that has produced some sort of tidal shift away from Simms.
In fact, the Prime Minister's recent announcement of moving weather research to Gander is considerably more believable than the Conservative promise. After all, Harper is just agreeing to undo something that has been done and that won't actually improve the quality of weather forecasting.
Ditto as well for identifying the two St. John's seats as being solidly Conservative.
Nothing public has changed the starting position in this campaign. At best, the Conservatives are marginally ahead.
Both Siobhan Coady and Paul Antle are excellent contenders, with Coady clearly carrying great momentum from her last run at St. John's South-Mount Pearl in 2004. A supposedly safe Conservative seat slipped dramatically and Coady came within a hair's breadth of unseating a veteran Connie.
For both seats, the Conservative incumbents suffered serious damage in their efforts to dance on the offshore deals.
A sign of how deep were their self-inflicted wounds is their current ad campaign. It all stresses the exact opposite of what occurred and has a bunch of people coming forward giving testimonials to things that, frankly, these guys never did.
If they were genuinely safe, both incumbents wouldn't be trying so hard to convince us they had the seats locked up.
Add to that the small number of Loyola Hearn signs in St. John's South-Mount Pearl and his heavy media buy aimed at his core audience. This guy's strategy is to hold on to what he's got; he isn't trying to win back anyone he lost or gain anyone new.
My own prediction hasn't changed on the Newfoundland and Labrador ridings, based on observation and what polling has been publicly available. It isn't scientific but more of a gut instinct.
Liberals solid in five.
Liberals solidly in contention in two, with a strong possibility that both Conservative incumbents will be collecting second pensions on January 24.
What will tip the difference in the next few weeks will be the heightened visibility of the Liberals in St. John's and Mount Pearl.
As I said before, keep an eye on these two easternmost seats.
They are the ones to watch
